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Disgraced legacy of Cardinal Law

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
12/22/2017 08:29:05 AM EST

A cardinal above the law. That epitaph best describes the former disgraced archbishop of Boston.

Cardinal Bernard F. Law, whose place as one of America's most influential Roman Catholic prelates came tumbling down in 2002 after revelations surfaced that he had protected abusive priests for years, died on Wednesday. He was 86.

Law arrived in Boston in 1984, a Harvard-educated advocate of social justice for immigrants and the poor. Assigned by Pope John Paul II as Boston's new archbishop, he was immediately embraced by his new flock.

In the intervening 17 years, he rose in stature, becoming one of this country's most powerful religious figures. Close to both popes and presidents, and despite his adherence to traditional church teachings, Law displayed an ecumenical spirit by fostering respectful relations with Protestants, Jews and other faiths.

Indeed, in Boston circles, Law was seen as a mover and shaker, right up there with our senior U.S. senator, Ted Kennedy.

All the while presiding over and enabling a cancer of clergy sexual abuse that was about to rock the Catholic Church to its core.

Law's Teflon façade began to crumble early in 2002, when a judge released documents related to the case of the Rev. John J. Geoghan, a defrocked priest who had been shuttled among a half-dozen parishes while accusations swirled about his sexual abuse of 130 boys over 30 years.

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Law tried to downplay what he saw as merely an embarrassment by transferring Geoghan to another parish, based on what he characterized as flawed psychiatric advice.

But the veil of the Catholic Church's deceit had been lifted. In the Geoghan aftermath, hundreds of people came forward to say they had been molested by priests in the archdiocese, which spurred both lawsuits and criminal investigations.

Law still tried to nip this scandal in the bud; he removed 25 priests suspected of sexual abuse, and gave prosecutors the names of 80 priests accused of abuse over decades.

That's where his cooperation ended, as more heartbreaking details of church-protected sexual predators became public.

The personnel file of the Rev. Paul R. Shanley, disclosed by a plaintiff's lawyer, indicated that Cardinal Law and his predecessor, Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, knew of dozens of pedophilia accusations against the former self-described street priest, but allowed Shanley to have continued contacts with troubled children.

The Rev. Joseph E. Birmingham was another one of those sheltered sex abusers. One of Law's subordinates, Bishop John B. McCormack of Manchester, N.H., repeatedly denied to parishioners that Birmingham was a threat to molest minors, even though Birmingham's personnel file showed evidence of abuse starting under Richard Cardinal Cushing in 1964.

In the years after Birmingham's death in 1989, scores of his alleged victims came forward, detailing accounts of his compulsive molestation of children during six parish assignments in his 29 years as a priest.

One of those assignments was at St. Michael's Church in Lowell, where he served from 1970 to 1977. There, his alleged victims numbered more than 20, including David Lyko, who recounted his painful experience in Thursday's Sun.

Lyko was among the first group of more than 552 people abused by priests to split an $85 million cash settlement from the archdiocese. Many more victims and millions more in settlements followed.

Instead of being held accountable for enabling the molestation of the most vulnerable in his charge, Law fled to Rome, where he -- as incomprehensible as it sounds -- was allowed to serve as archpriest of the Papal Liberian Basilica of St. Mary, a plum assignment, especially for someone who left his previous position in disgrace.

On Thursday, the Vatican honored Law with a full cardinal's funeral at St. Peter's Basilica, during which Pope Francis gave a "final commendation," or blessing, as he has for cardinals' funerals previously.

The Catholic Church, despite the curse of clergy sexual abuse that it allowed to fester, continues to protect its own, no matter their sins.

Cardinal Law wasn't the first archbishop to conceal the rampant abuse of his priests, but his inability to recognize its cumulative destructive effects leaves him with a lot to answer for -- if not in this world, then the next.

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